The second wife to Henry, who's employed by the foreign service, and adoring stepmother to Pippa, Clarissa has the alarming propensity of being disbelieved when she is truthful and believed only when she isn't. That makes her the perfect Agatha Christie character.

Her lavish rental in Kent, England, hosts not only a few too many guests for anyone's comfort but also intrigue, confusion, upstart servants and, yes, a murder or two.

Add to that a valuable stamp, a top secret diplomatic meeting, a narcotics ring, secret doors and drawers, a custody battle and a blindfolded port-drinking contest and you've got a great script.

While "Spider's Web" relies on its ensemble cast, much rests in Clarissa's power to alternately charm and infuriate everyone around her. Early on, Christie sets her up as the possible murderer when Clarissa admits she enjoys an outlandish parlor game of the imagination called "Supposing I," as in "Supposing I murdered someone, would you help me?"

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As one character quips, "Your natural talent for crime leaves me speechless."

One minute everyone's socializing and sipping port, the next a corpse pops out of a hidden room. The appearance galvanizes Clarissa and her friends to cover up a murder for noble reasons - so as not to endanger her husband's career.

When the police show up unexpectedly after an anonymous tip about a murder, the web gets stickier and thicker until it seems the whole plot might spin out of control. Of course, it never does.

Josie de Guzman, as Clarissa, appeared with oddly heavy white makeup that seemed not so much purposely pale as oddly and unnecessarily ghoulish. Hers was a strangely heavy, stilted performance mostly lacking the flutter and sparkle the character should have, often making a sparkling parlor feel like a claustrophobic closet.

Near the end, though, de Guzman lights up as Clarissa regales her husband with all the shocking things she's encountered while he was away (and which she's enjoyed far too much for a proper English woman): corpses, police, invisible ink, drug addicts and the fact that she was nearly murdered.

McKenna Marmolejo brought a breath of fresh air as Clarissa's stepdaughter Pippa, who manages to eat, sleep and sneak her way through the play. Speaking of sneaking, Margaret Daly, as the gardener Mildred Peake, drew the audience in and made for a laugh with her busy-bodying and interfering. This is a woman who wields a pitchfork and hides bodies from the police with aplomb, all the while invoking habeas corpus.

Peake is also another of Christie's clever red herrings, one of those characters who is either a type we suspect of murder or a character who knows more than a cantankerous gardener should.

Once the police arrive, commanded by Inspector Lord, ably and engagingly performed by John Feltch, the convoluted plots begin to unwind and rewind, which then leads to more confusion, two more attempted murders and the true killer revealed.

I won't say who it is, but isn't the culprit always someone in our midst?

In spite of the play's palpable charms, this performance felt awfully long. Listless timing and misspoken lines seemed largely the result of awkward English - and ween Welsh - accents. "Spider's Web" would have been much lighter, snappier and more enjoyable without the put-on accents.

"Perish the thought!" you might exclaim. Yes, we're enamored by the sound of dialogue in Jane Austen films and "Downton Abbey." But these Alley actors are not from Kent. Perhaps we don't need them to struggle (and fail) to sound as if they were.

In the end, crisp diction and fluid timing would be much more enjoyable. That's not such a crime after all.